24-year-old sex offender pleads guilty to rape in Saratoga County

BALLSTON SPA -- A Corinth man was transported from a federal prison this week to Saratoga County long enough to plead guilty to a local charge of rape he committed before going to prison.

Thomas M. Allen, 24, of Palmer Avenue in Corinth pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted rape, a felony that was reduced from second-degree rape as part of the plea agreement.

Saratoga County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Buckley said Allen had sex with a minor who was younger than 15 when he was 21. That crime was reported about a month after Allen was convicted of third-degree rape, for which he spent six months in jail.

By the time police identified Allen as the suspect, though, the sex offender had already moved to Maryland, where he did not register as a sex offender.

Advertisement

That was when the federal government got involved.

Federal agents, including the U.S. Marshall's Service, tracked Allen and brought him back to New York, where he was convicted of failing to update his sex offender information, now a federal crime because he left the state.

He pleaded guilty Tuesday to the new rape charge and was sentenced to two years in state prison and five years of post-release supervision. That will run concurrent with the federal time and when he is released from prison -- likely next fall -- Allen will need to report to two parole officers.

For Saratoga County, Allen will need to report for five years after his release and will face a host of requirements, including curfew, drug tests and psychological evaluations. He also is required to register as a sex offender.

For the federal charges, Allen must adhere to all local sex offender requirements and report to a federal parole officer for the rest of his life.

"Mr. Allen will be doing a lot of reporting," Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Belliss said.

In addition to his state requirements, federal monitoring requires that Allen never have contact with anyone younger than 18 years of age unless supervised and bans him from any areas where minors are likely to congregate, such as school grounds, playgrounds or daycare facilities, without his parole officer's permission. It also requires random searches and polygraph tests and that he notify his parole officer if he intends to change addresses.

If he fails to comply with the new requirements, he may be sent to federal prison.

"The requirements are more onerous than what he had before," Belliss said.

Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III said that while Allen shirked previous sex-offender registration or probation requirements, "the stakes are extremely high if he decides to do it again."